TOEIC and Japan

This is the third part of my discussion of how Japanese people learn English. As in the previous posts I will remind people that I am talking in generalities. There are many individual outstanding English learners amongst the Japanese.

Japan accounts for about half of all the people in the world who take TOEIC. I doubt if many in Sweden or Holland, or wherever English is spoken well, worry too much about TOEIC. I understand the need for a relatively objective measure of English skills, from the point of view of an employer who needs employees with English skills. If the Human Resources managers cannot judge English standards themselves, they need a test. TOEIC is less expensive and quicker than TOEFL and IELTS. It serves the purpose.  Unfortunately, in Japan, it all too often becomes the sole aim or goal of English learning. The Swedes learn for fun, the Japanese learn for TOEIC. The Swedes do better.

Far too many Japanese people take TOEIC. That is one reason why their average scores are so low. I wold not take TOEIC unless I was sure of getting at least 750. In other words, I would make sure that I had a vocabulary of at least 8,000 words (the way we count at The Linguist) before even taking the exam. It makes no sense to take the TOEIC and score 450. I think the average Japanese score is around that level.

So learners need to do a lot of enjoyable listening and reading to build up to the vocabulary level, and listening and reading ability needed for a decent TOEIC score. If you read a lot, you will read faster, and that is key to doing well in TOEIC. If you listen often to the same material as you are reading, you can increase your reading speed. And you should do difficult reading for vocabulary acquisition, online preferably in order to access online dictionaries, and to create your personal database of words and phrases. Yet you also need to do a lot of easy reading to build up the ability to read the words you already know, quickly!

Most of all, the more enjoyable the studies, the better you learn. Cramming for TOEIC is inefficient in the long run. Taking the test when you are ready can be an interesting measure of your achievements, but cramming for the test it is not an efficient way to learn.

Comments

[Jemini]

"In other words, I would make sure that I had a vocabulary of at least 8,000 words (the way we count at The Linguist) before even taking the exam."

How does that compare to the way everyone else counts?

[Steve]

Jemini,

At The Linguist we count each different form of a word as a new word. Run, runs, ran, running etc. are all separate words. The reason we do this is that our system automatically adds example sentences of these words in use into each learners database. These example sentences come from each learner's own reading and listening. Bu reviewing how these words work together with other words and remembering where they were seen and heard, the learner gets a natural sense of the structure of the language. Obviously "running" is used differently from "ran".
Our way counting words is different from the more common way of counting vocaulary levels, i.e.word families, whereby run, runs, running etc. are all one word family. In English, counting words, rather than word families, will give a total about 50% higher. Knowing 7,500 words, on our count, is equivalent to knowing 5,000 word families (according to research by Paul Nation I believe)

[Jemini]

Steve,

Thanks. Either way you count it, a person knowing 7,500 or 5,000 words is pretty much fluent.

[Dorota]

I posted this comment (and a request...) somewhere below an article from July and then I realised that maybe no one will ever read it. So I decided to copy it once again here. However, mind you, it's not related to this article's subject.
I'm currently preoccupied with academic writing. Not because I love it or anything... It's just one of my classes and have to write lots of dissertations all over. Anyways, I was wondering if you could help me. What are the examples of the intervies and how do you write a summary of an interview? I can't find the answer anywhere.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Dorota

Hi, Steve.

After being a Linguist member for only five months, I can tell everybody that The Linguist system made me improve my English skills dramatically. In fact, I left The Linguist to go to a local college to get my engineering credentials and my studies have been really great so far. Right now I am returning to The Linguist as I feel that I still have a lot of work ahead to master my English. I can not say that I am not fluent in English, but I believe that my English fluency may get better (my vocabulary database was about 9000 words when I left my membership). I have not been able to totally avoid that sometimes my Spanish background takes over my brain and makes me form English phrases by following Spanish language patterns. Of course, any time I do that, I immediately face some communicating problems. May I ask you, Steve, for some advice that may help an English learner to overcome this situation? Would you recommend some special learning schedule to get over this kind of problems?

Thanks a lot!

[Humberto Soto]

Hi, Steve:

I am sorry. I forgot to write my name down in my last comment!

Humberto

[Tony]

very interesting information regarding word-counting, thanks, Steve. I am wondering how you measure phrases? I am wrestling with memorizing the phrases, like "up to the task", "on the back burner", really "drive me nuts" :)

[Steve]

I am flying back to Canada from Sweden today. I will answer in more detail over the next few days. Here are some quick comments.
Jemini,
7,500 words is a minimum for fluency in English in my opinion. If a person want to understand a wide range of discussions, enjoy reading and listening to the radio or movies etc. the goal needs to be over 10,000 words. This is quite achievable. I believe a person can easily learn 3,000 words a year and enjoy themselves, going from strength to strength.
Humberto, You will gradually become more independent of your mother tongue, but some influence will always remain. There is nothing wrong with that. The more you focus on phrases, and simply reuse the phrases you have noticed and learned, the more native you will sound.
Dorota,
The key to academic writing is to make sure you are able to persent and evaluate different perspectives on an issue. If you just relate what different people have written without analysing and forming your own conclusions you will do poorly. The rest, making footnotes and references, theme sentences etc. are mechanics which ar easily learned in any paper on the subject. More later.
Tony,
You can save phrases in The Linguist and count them. However, the key yardstick is the word level. If you save "task" you will automatically find all the places where it is used, including "up to the task", "daunting task" "completed the task" etc. so you will be reminded of where you saw and heard the word and together with which words.
Bye for now. I have to pack and go to the airport.

[hiroshi]

Steve san, getting back to the first question, why do the Japanese struggle with English, there seem to be other factors involoved in this issue.
As you have said, cultural ego can be an obstacle to language learning and studying for English tests as the sole aim is not efficient. To be sure, compared with other people like the Swedes who are better at English, many of us seem to be overly obsessed with English tests. A friend of mine, a girl from Hongkog, who can can speak several languages quite fluently, once told me: how come the Japanese study for English tests so hard, English is English, said she. I guess that what she was getting at was that there is no such thing as english for Toeic, toefl, businee, academic English, with which I agree.
In addition to the reasons you mentioned, unfortunately these tests are in fact necessary evils for a majority of the Japanese who want to get into a good university and then on to a big, reputable company. It is sad to say that, but, In order to survive the rat race, we are conditioned to think that we are obliged to study and cram for exams. Studying for fun? working for fun? that is considered the taboos in our society, since most of us believe in no pain, no gain belief.
For instance,I still can not possibly forget about two Japanese I saw on the beach when we went on a summer camp with a group of the international students two years ago. When I enjoyed playing volley ball with other gaijins and turned around, I saw two Japanese studying textbooks on the beach! Never before had I seen anyone reading textbooks on the beach. The funny thing is that although they are both from a top private university and their super diligence to the extent that they study on vacation, they could not even hold a normal conversation with foreigners in English. A lot of elites, those from prestigious schools in many other countries, as far as I know, can speak at least good-fluent Engligh, but why Japanese? ( I am not only talking about other Japanese but also realize that I am classified as classic examples of the total failures in language learning)

Starting with the question that there must be something wrong with the way we think and study, Steve san started to discuss this issues.

Following are a few of the things I noticed through observing myself and other Japanese on Japanese nature:

I can still remember the comment my friend made. After the camp, I ate out with my Swiss friend who speaks 5 languages fluently at a Izakaya in Bangkok and then he put an interesting question to me: why is it that the Japanese people are "too" obssessd with study and why do they speak such poor English despite their seriousness. In other words, we may be way "too serious" in study, work and many other things , sticking to tiny little things, namely, perfection. That may partly account for overwork, a shocking number of the Japanese with mental illnesses ( as Winston Churchil put it, perfection makes one paralysed. our minds may be crippled by morbid seriousness) karoshi ( die of overwork, which is now incoporated into English words I came across in a sociology book) unusually high suicide rate and poor performance at English. Becasue we believe that study has to be serious and learning is something we learn from teachers at school, many of us can not believe that, no matter how hard you try to convince us to study for fun, we just do not get it, just like some learners of the linguist you mentioned on your podcast can not set themselves free from grammar study. In relation to this, another complaint I frequently hear from foreingers living in Japan is extreme inflexibilities in school, business etc. (You might have clashed with some Japanese people over these matters too.) We are so serious and inflexible that we are bad at changing things, not to mention our attitudes and study method toward language laearning. ( these are of course the downsides of the Japanese natures, but on the other hands, in terms of keeping the rules, punctuality and productivities due to the pursuit of perfection and seriousness, we may be better at getting things done than an easy going people)

In short, freeing ourselves from the excessive, extreme seriousness and shifting it to studying for fun attitude would help us improve in English faster.
There may be many other factors that account for our poor performance in English, though. What are they?

[Steve]

Hiroshi,

Three points.

I appreciate your eagerness to challenge conventional wisdom and the traditional approach to language learning.

I agree that there is only one English. Business English, Academic English etc. involves a minor adjustment in terminology and form which can only happen successfully based on a solid foundation in the language. This solid foundation is best acquired through enjoyable, learner directed study.

Do not be too hard on your countrymen. Every nation has its national genius, a predilection for doing things a certain way. This is part of their inherited culture. These predilections usually come with a price tag. They are good for certain things and counterproductive in other situations. I remember when learning Japanese I read about Kakiemon who spent 50 years and ruined his family trying to make a perfect colour of glaze for his pottery. When selling lumber in Japan I often encounered quite unrealistic specifications for straightness in wood to be used in houses that were otherwise poorly insulated and uncomfortable. In my experience there is a predilection for the pursuit of perfection for the sake of perfection, regardless of how useful or even whether it is profitable. This has its good side and bad side. The pursuit of perfection in language study is usually counterproductive. I have to think of a way to appeal to the Japanese idealistic pursuit of perfection of form, while directing them to the enjoyment of content.